The two kinds of test send

Issue Mint has two test sends, and they answer different questions. The test on the sending tab proves a message can leave at all. The test in the composer sends the issue itself to one address, through the same path a real send takes. Neither one reaches your subscribers, and neither one carries the unsubscribe headers a real issue carries.

The plumbing test, on the sending tab

Settings, then Sending, has a Send a test button that mails a short fixed note to the email address on your account. There is no box to type a different address into: the question this test answers is whether a message can get out, not what the issue looks like.

The note names your newsletter, says which route it came through, and says that nothing went to your subscribers. On your own Amazon SES account or your own SMTP server, a test that goes out is what marks your sending details verified, and a refusal marks them as failing with the provider’s reason recorded against them. On hosted sending there is nothing to verify, because hosted sending works from signup, so the test is a check rather than a step. A hosted failure is never recorded against your sending details either, since the credentials involved are ours rather than yours.

The issue test, in the composer

Under the preview panel in the composer there is a Send a test to box that takes any address you type. It sends the issue as it currently stands, with [Test] in front of the subject line so a test can never be mistaken later for the issue itself sitting in your inbox.

The test goes out through the same gateway, the same inlined HTML and the same two-part body as a real send, rather than through a simplified path. That is the whole point of it: a test that skips those proves nothing about them. If what you want is to see the layout rather than to receive it, the preview panel is quicker and shows the plain text alternative as well.

What a test leaves out on purpose

A test issue is rendered without tracking, so nothing in it is counted anywhere.

The links are not rewritten through click tracking and the open pixel is left out, which means a click in a test cannot register against the issue’s own figures before a single subscriber has seen it. The unsubscribe links in the body are neutralised: they point at nothing rather than at a real address.

Why a test carries no unsubscribe header

A test carries no List-Unsubscribe or List-Unsubscribe-Post header, because there is nothing for those headers to point at.

An unsubscribe link belongs to one recipient of one issue, and a test creates no recipient record, so there is no address for the link to unsubscribe. A header pointing nowhere is worse than an absent one: the mail client shows its one-click unsubscribe button, the reader presses it, and nothing happens. Leaving the headers off means the button does not appear at all, which is honest.

So a test is not the way to check that unsubscribing works. Put your own address on your list and send a real issue to it, and you get the footer, the headers and the unsubscribe page exactly as a reader would.

When a test will not send

A test is refused for the same reasons a real send would be refused, and it says which.

If hosted sending is paused on your account, the test is refused with the same reason the send would give, because a pause that a send honours and a button does not is not a pause. If hosted sending is briefly unavailable at our end, the message says so and says that nothing is wrong with your newsletter. On your own provider, a test with no provider chosen or no from address set tells you which one is missing, and the sender details page covers both.

SMTP failures are translated rather than passed through as codes. A rejected username and password, a host or port that cannot be reached, a secure connection that failed, and a from address the server will not accept are each named as themselves, because the server’s own wording is rarely the useful part.

What a test costs you

Nothing against your limits. A test creates no recipient record, and both the monthly hosted allowance and the daily ceiling count recipient records, so tests are free of every sending limit however many you send.

A hosted test still travels on the same sending reputation as a real issue, though, and it carries your account with it.